AVEVA (LSE:AVV), the leading provider of plant and marine design and engineering lifecycle solutions today announced that AVEVA PDMS 12.0, the next generation of productivity in plant design, is now commercially available and being progressively rolled-out to customers.

AVEVA PDMS 12.0, part of the AVEVA Plant portfolio, enables companies to make immediate and substantial productivity gains on their projects from the new capability delivered on a proven design platform with new exciting capabilities. Existing customers will further benefit from a seamless upgrade and compatibility with associated AVEVA Plant products, such as the world leading AVEVA Global product for distributed project execution.

The release is packed full of productivity improvements with ease of use, rule-based design, automation and faster deployment at the heart of the developments.

"The release of AVEVA PDMS 12.0 and associated products represents over 300 man-years of investment that will truly provide our customers with improved competitive advantage. Furthermore, it demonstrates our commitment to the continual progression' of AVEVA's product development strategy" said Dave Wheeldon, Group Product Development Director.

"With the release of AVEVA PDMS 12.0, we really do take this technology platform to new heights of productivity, not just for the end users and designers but across the whole project, offering further fabrication and construction savings by extending the scope and ability to control, manage and share project information globally."

Some of the exciting new key features in AVEVA PDMS 12.0 include:

Extensive enhancements to the advanced engineering applications for designing equipment, piping, ducting, structural steel, and supports - all of which are presented to the user in an easy to use Microsoft office look and feel, increasing familiarity and reducing design time.

An area which has been particularly enhanced is the use of design rule technology. Piping engineers will have a rule-based automatic pipe routing & quality checking feature as standard, and all disciplines will benefit from the new object associations which have been introduced into the plant model. These allow key relationships to be defined and continuously monitored as the design progresses and changes. The technology is used to good effect in a new hole management application to assist the vital inter-discipline control & coordination.

The new catalogue and specification management application that is easy to use and reduces the effort required to create and modify catalogue and specification items, reducing the need for specialist skills in this area.

New database and customisation IPR protection capability enables customers to more securely share their critical data with sub-contractors and partners while reducing the risk of copy or modification.

The new access platforms, stairs and ladders application: a further example of rule-based design, enabling ease of modification of complex access configurations, and providing accurate material and weight reports.

Extensive customisation and configuration capabilities, utilising Microsoft .NET, and these too have been greatly enhanced to enable customers to further optimise, tailor and control functionality in line with their work processes and standards.

The new and innovative approach to P&ID integration - also pioneered with the release of AVEVA PDMS 12.0. P&IDs from multiple authoring tools can be consolidated into a single schematic model of the plant, which can then be used to build and compare with the 3D plant model. The schematic model is a new open environment that brings P&ID and 3D data together for the first time on a globally-deployable shared technology platform. The schematic model data is fully managed within the AVEVA PDMS 12.0 environment and new AVEVA P&ID Manager and AVEVA P&ID 3D Integrator products are being introduced to work with this as part of AVEVA's open P&ID strategy.
All these features lead to even more accurate, complete and clash free designs with AVEVA PDMS 12.0, thereby ensuring reduced project costs. Dave Wheeldon further commented, "AVEVA PDMS 12.0 delivers major innovations to our customers, ranging from improved productivity for individual designers through to increased overall project savings that result from significant improvements in data management and control."